Prog rock under attack - I was

Blacksword wrote: Dick Heath: Marvin was clearly an inspiration to many. Fair enough. He was an innovator etc, It's just not my era, not my music. It means nothing to me.

True. As I implied I grew out of his style of pop in the mid 60's, because Marvin and the Shads became very formulaeic (but obviously satisfying a complacent market in the British Commonwealth and Europe) , and early Eric Clapton and many after him provided me with adventurous, new music around the time I wanted to seriously broaden my musical horizons.

In my defence I was listening to the radio to ascertain the severity of the grid-lock which I was sat in! - I only listen to talk-sport (because they mainly talk about Football (Soccer to you non-brits out there) and I thus satiate my two hobbies - football in the AM and Prog rock on the way home.....

incidentally - My two sons have not opened their minds to the gates of prog and unfortunately are controlled by peer-pressure and whats "In" with the people they hang around with! - C'est La Vie......

Pixel Pirate:

Malcolm McClaren stated in 'The great rock 'n' roll swindle' that a band that couldn't play was better than a band that could. He may have thought he was speaking out for musical rebellion but infact he was summarising the whole ethos of the music industry. In rock the best musicians are at best ignored by the mainstream media, at worst loathed and ridiculed. The actual reasons for this are unclear. At the heart of it, is that the masses want music that they can dance to or easily sing along to. Generally prog doesn't offer this. Dancey sing along music makes a quick buck and manifests itself in hit singles which can be sold to advertsiers to sell products. There's more financial millage in it. Prog acts stick around for decades like a bad smell, even after they have 'had their day' prodcuing albums for a loyal but ever shrinking middle age audience. Thats the view of the industry I reckon..

£££££$$$$$$

Dick Heath:

Marvin was clearly an inspiration to many. Fair enough. He was an innovator etc, It's just not my era, not my music. It means nothing to me.

It would be nice to have the sort of music I listern to catered for by mainstream radio. I'm not suggesting 24 hour Progathons, just a couple of hours a week late at night, when all the 'normal' people are tucked up in bed and wont be upset or frightened by the sound of real musicians playing.

It gets worse than that with some radio stations (as you are no doubt aware); There is a practice whereby "playlists" are actually tapes or CDs made by a particular record company or group of moguls in order to promote by drip-feed a particular section of their stable. Radio stations are REQUIRED to play these CDs or face withdrawal of financial support. The "programme controllers" just go for regular drinkies with the moguls and keep the wallets nice and fat, and the moguls nicely stroked so that they will send more product.

You are right, I guess. Prog is more intelligent and complex music. Which makes it not necessarily more qualified as a musical expression, but different. And because of taste, many like it and many do not, just like certif1ed and country music. An occaisional country or hip-hop (gasp!)(okay, so there's only one hip-hop song I like: OutKast's "Hey Ya" and that's it -- I dislike everything else hip-hop) song is okay, but any more than that is just boring or annoying to me. When I play prog music at my house, my friends might like one or two songs (especially Dream Theater), but any more and they try to kill me, and I try to kill them if they play too much Rammstein (eg: one song ).

But prog can at least claim to be the following: more complex; more intellectual; an aquired taste; music made for focusing on and understanding (except in the case of certain prog instrumental songs: some, like Godspeed You Black Emperor, lend themselves as background music. But even that requires some attempt to understand it because it is so far removed from traditional pop music); more experimental and adventurous; more daring; and......

better!

I think the music critics have an inferiority complex. It must drive them crazy that there are musicians more intelligent than them.....that is why progressive rock is persecuted. So they come up with key words like pretentious or tedious to bring them down a peg

It must drive them absolutely bonkers to imagine fans being more intelligent

Blacksword wrote: 'lucky' Hank Marvin got where he did because he was not actually that good. Thats the perverse thing about the music industry. The more simple and moronic the music the more successful its likely to be, commercially. Its a shame to celebrate the Strat with a salute to Hank, one of the most boring and overated musicans in the history of music. IMO.

Come on you can't leave it like that - Marvin was there at the end of the 50's, so has to be credited as a pioneer,   Scotty Moore being the only real influence. (Similarly Jet Harris the Shadows bass player, was the first Brit rock'n'roller to play electric bass guitar in the UK). Primitive absolutely but you have to a start somewhere and there is hardly a British, Canadian or Australian guitarist who came to the fore in the late 60's and early 70's who doesn't acknowledge Marvin as an influence - similarly before riffs from Smoke on the water or Stairway to heaven annoyed other shoppers in guitar shops, budding guitarists played Apache. But eventual tedium (yes I do agree with you up to a point), of the Shadows albums and singles, combined with my personal  discovery of Eric Clapton in the mid 60's quantum shifted me away from the Shads - nevertheless  both the first Cliff Richard and Shadows albums still get regularly played here because  both were innovative.

 And take a look at the tribute album credits, for the contributors who cared to be involved with Marvin/Shadows tribute:

Twang: A Tribute to the Shadows (CD) 7243833928

Apache by Ritchie Blackmore/FBI by Brian May/Wonderful Land by Tommy Iommi/The savage by Steve Stevens/ The Rise & Fall of Flingel Bunt by Hank Marvin/ Midnight by Peter Green/Spring is nearly here by Neil Young & Randy Bachman/Atlantis by Mark Knopfler/ The frightened City by Peter Frampton/Dance on by Keith Urban & Stewart Copeland/Stingray by Andy Summers/ The Stranger by Bela Fleck & the Flecktones

I think GMR took a release (on that date) that was probably fed to all the commercial radio stations in the UK! - The mainstream (mass) media's portrayal of progressive rock has always been the same - long, boring over complicated and self indulgent (and you CAN'T dance to it!).

However - I Can't dance!